Data: The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4200% Better at This

My wife and I entered the small jewelry shop and were greeted - not with a warm welcome - but with a matter of fact "my name is...and I'm the owner...and I created everything in the store" which was followed by fifteen minutes of non-stop presentation of everything she created.  

You've been in a store like this and you know exactly how you have reacted to that.  It includes thinking all of the following:

• Stop!
• Shut Up!
• I don't care!
• Go away!
• Oh wait, I can go away!
• Please stop so I can leave!
• Your stuff is not even that good!
• Has anyone ever listened to this?
• You've got to be kidding me!
• There's more?
• OMG make it stop!!!

When it was over my wife said "thank you" and we walked across the street to a gallery where we were quickly greeted - no greeted is totally the wrong word - instructed to "put on a mask!"  The mask thing again.  About ten minutes later he caught us staring at one particular painting for several minutes and asked, "Are you familiar with her work?"  We said, "No" and he took the opposite approach of the Queen of all Jewelry and walked away!

So in one store we weren't the least bit interested, she didn't notice, didn't care and kept on keepin' on.  In the other store we would have bought that painting and he abandoned us.

I don't usually write about retail selling and today's article is not about retail selling except to make a couple of important points.

If we all know how boring, irrelevant and agonizing it is to be presented to when we aren't interested, then why do salespeople, who have surely been on the receiving end of the scenario described above, insist on presenting before they have a qualified, interested prospect?  It's stupid, irresponsible, and a huge waste of time.  But they persist.

Salespeople aren't great at taking a consultative approach as only 14% have it as a strength.  Only 42% of the top 10% have it as a strength and as you might guess, 0% of the bottom 10% have it as a strength.  It's worse than that though as only 1% of the bottom 50% have it as a strength.  So, the top 10% are 4200% better at listening and asking questions than the bottom 50%!

Even when salespeople have been trained to listen and ask questions first they choose to tell their prospects everything they know up front.  Why?

I can think of ten potential reasons and none of them are very good:

1. They lack experience and all they know is what they learned in orientation training
2. They need to be liked and fear that if they ask questions their prospects will become angry
3. They don't agree with the consultative approach
4. Their sales manager is not holding them accountable for taking the consultative approach
5. Their sales manager is not reinforcing the consultative approach through coaching
6. They don't listen very well and as a result, don't know which question to ask
7. They don't know what "good" sounds like and can't replicate it
8. They haven't practiced and lack confidence
9. They think that listening and asking questions delays getting to the demo
10. They are doing fine doing it the way they are doing it

Everything on my list is symptomatic of numbers four and five. With reinforcement coaching and accountability, every other reason goes away.  That brings us to the next point/question.  Why aren't sales managers doing numbers four and five?

I can think of ten more potential reasons and none of them are any good either:

1. They are spending too much of their time on personal sales
2. They need to be liked and fear that holding their salespeople accountable will make them angry
3. They don't agree with the consultative approach
4. Their boss is not holding them accountable for implementing the consultative approach
5. Their boss is not reinforcing the consultative approach through coaching
6. They don't listen very well and as a result, don't know which question to ask their salespeople
7. They don't know what "good" sounds like either and can't replicate it
8. They haven't practiced role-playing and lack confidence
9. They agree that listening and asking questions delays getting to the demo
10. They are doing fine doing it the way they are doing it

Most of these reasons are essentially the same.

It's a top down problem and the folks at the top just hope the folks at the bottom take care of business and don't really care how. And therein lies the problem.  Ambivalence from the C-Suite basically suggests that they just don't care.

What can we do about that?

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